Читать книгу Behind the Moon - Madison Smartt Bell - Страница 12

The bikes ticked slightly as they cooled, there beside the boulder. Jamal had pushed up his yellow sunglasses to investigate his saddle bags. Karyn frowned into the screen of her phone, blinked at the bright images emerging and dissolving. Sonny ran his blunt fingers down her spine into her waistband, and Karyn elbowed him and wriggled away.

“Of course no signal,” Sonny said. “What else did we come here for?”

Marko pulled a clear bottle full of a bright violet liquid from his inside jacket pocket and tossed it Sonny, who had to stoop to catch it. Bad throw. Straightening, Sonny uncapped the bottle and passed it to Karyn, who took a gulp without looking, still fidgeting with her phone. Once she had registered the taste she pushed the phone into her tight front pocket and reached for the bottle again. Then Sonny offered the bottle to Julie. Julie shook her head.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I’ve got water.”

“You need your vitamins,” Marko said. She could feel him looking at her—she didn’t look back. Jamal was laying out the components of a small dome tent on the sand beside his silvery-blue Vespa. Julie watched him, his long fingers shaking out the sectioned poles so that the elastic cords snapped them together at full length. She picked up one of the poles and flexed the fiberglass.

“Here,” Jamal said. “You thread it this way.”

Marko bent over his heavy black-and-silver Harley, unloading from the leather saddlebags: trail mix and MREs, a much, much bigger tent kit, a small vinyl case that he unzipped to reveal a sleek little video palm-corder.

“Whoa,” said Karyn. “Cool camera! Where’d you get that?”

“Ultimo.” For a moment, Marko caught her in the camera’s steely eye. Julie watched Karyn, playing up, shifting the rounded weights of her body, tossing her honey-streaked hair back and exposing the white line of her throat.

“Okay, lemme see,” Karyn said, reaching for the camera. Marko held it away from her, making her reach across his body, then let her have it.

“Jeez,” Karyn said. “High rez, huh?” Her fingernail jabbed at the tiny buttons. “Look how you can zoom in on that. Look, Julie, I can see all down in my pores.”

Gross Julie thought, but she was helping Jamal with the tent, capturing the poles at the corners so he could slip the floor pins into them. The tent took shape as its own small world, a free-standing hemisphere, and for some reason Julie pictured the other half that would make it whole, existing somehow like a reflection beneath the sand.

Jamal stood back, resting his knuckles on his narrow hips, and in the next moment a gust of wind caught the tent and whirled it end over end across the sand toward the horizon. Jamal stood frozen for a beat before he took off after it, and Julie started after him, but the wind was faster than both of them; they would never have caught the tent if it hadn’t died down.

Jamal seized the poles where they crossed at the top, then doubled over, winded by the two-hundred-yard dash. Julie trotted up, gasping herself, and laid one hand on the curve of a tent pole. Back by the boulder, under the cliff, the others were capering and slapping their knees, their faces twisting with inaudible laughter.

“Shit,” Jamal said, running a finger along a four-inch tear in the netting of one of the side windows.

“No biggie,” Julie said. “There’s no bugs out here anyway. Too dry.”

Jamal looked at her thoughtfully, then nodded, as if they’d made a deal. Then he picked up the tent like a briefcase and started back toward the cliff.

“Need help?” said Julie.

Jamal shrugged. “It doesn’t weigh anything.” But then the wind gusted up again, and Julie had to catch the other side of the tent to steady it.

“Stakes won’t hold in this loose sand,” Sonny said, when they had come back.

“Tell me about it,” said Jamal. “We’ll have to get rocks and weight it down.”

“What, inside?” Julie said.

“Of course, inside,” Jamal said. “Hold this a minute.”

Jamal’s tent would barely hold two people, and that was without any rocks inside it. There were only two tents. Julie had not thought about how that part would work out, and she decided not to think about it now, holding the tent in place while Jamal looked for rocks.